Aunt Lily Wilson 1887 — 1952

My Aunt Lily is dead in St. Louis.
She was a seamstress.
The family is angry and mourning.
Aunt Lily was laid out in a plain black dress
crudely stitched by a tailor at the funeral home.
I am not angry, I didn’t know her very well.
A dress is nothing to mourn at the end of a life.

Yesterday I found a young blue heron in the marsh.
I held it gently, stroked its long throat,
listened to it rasp in terror or contentment; how do you know?
My brother wanted to take it home
but I knew some adult would make us bring it back.
So I set it down and we went to look for frogs,
when I looked back the heron was gone
as if it had turned into a reed, become some dark space
where we would never dream to look.